I've read a lot of threads on here but this might be the most inspirational one so far. keep em coming.

 

Ten minutes exercises helped me a lot.

- 1 min exercise (scale, riff,...) - as accurate as you can,
- 1 min pause, (do not do anything but pause)
- 2 min exercise, (the same scale, riff,...)
- 2 min pause, (do not do anything but pause)
- 3 min exercise, (the same scale, riff,...)
- 1 min pause.

The author argues that you have to forget in order to remember again. (psychically and mentally)
When you play a scale or riff continuously you don`t forget-remember things. In the pause you visualize it mentally...

 

Last edited: Dec 22, 2021

Ten minutes exercises helped me a lot. As accurate as you can,

- 1 min exercise (scale, riff,...)
- 1 min pause, (do not do anything but pause)
- 2 min exercise, (the same scale, riff,...)
- 2 min pause, (do not do anything but pause)
- 3 min exercise, (the same scale, riff,...)
- 1 min pause.

The author argues that you have to forget in order to remember again. (physically and mentally)
When you play a scale or riff continuously you don`t forget-remember things.
The pauses help you visualize it mentally and helps you concentrate.

Also, I`m a visual kind of person. I used to have copies of empty fret-board drawings (six) on a paper and write notes and-or related scales down.

Playing for me is like a samurai kind of thing. You learn the moves as well as you can and then let the unconscious-artistic part take over.

 

Last edited: Dec 22, 2021

I'm the typical rock guitarist of my era, mixture of alternate, hammer on's, pulloff's. Love Steve Morse and kept trying the strict alternate picking thing but could never get the hang. My big problem is moving my picking hand across strings. Always gets hung up by whatever anchoring I use no matter how lightly. I trainwreck going across more than 2-3 strings. Depressing seeing these young guitarists today picking so effortlessly. Figure I'm just not built for that picking style and my left/right hand coordination is naturally shit, lol. I do fine with the alternate/hammer on pull off mixture and go fast that way, but strict alt, fuggettaboutit

 

First some background. I became serious about the guitar in 1968. Spent the lion's share of my life playing for money. Didn't get wealthy but did alright. Still play several hours per day & attend a weekly gathering of some mighty fine musicians.
The number 1 absolutely life-changing thing that I always recommend to younger players is - Play in a dark room with your eyes closed.
My relationship with my instrument became at once more intimate. I learned to stop looking at the guitar [ and therefore thinking about it ] and just feel the music [ and therefor NOT think about it ]. For me, thinking about the guitar was akin to translating to another language. Brain to eyes to guitar to eyes to brain again. Time and energy consuming. I found a more direct connection to the sound. That made it brain to music to brain again.
The fretboard became one, without division. No 'above or below 12th fret' or 'bass versus treble strings' or anything else like that. The guitar became a 'single whole unit'.
As I write this I realize words are insufficient. Try it for as long as you are able. Then do it again the next day. Do that for several weeks. I believe you will be quite pleased with the outcome.

 

In my younger years I would learn songs from tabs. Played like that for a few years, my technique was not so good but I could fool someone who knew nothing about guitar into believing I was the next Eddie Van Halen.

In my early twenties I discovered Grateful Dead, Zappa and Phish. I stopped looking at tabs and started jamming along live recordings of each, and there are hundreds of hours of live material for each one.

Got to a point where I was so into jamming with those guys, sometimes I would play a lick, and immediately after the same lick or something very similar would be played by Jerry/Frank/Trey.

Of course, on my best day I can merely be a not-so-bad impersonator of those guys. When they're on fire nothing I play can be a match.

And I should add, they weren't the only ones I jammed along with. But they were my biggest influences for sure.

But after years and years of this practice routine I got pretty good at improvising melodic stuff. I still struggle a lot with jazz, mainly because I never managed to get theory in my thick skull, but in a rock context I can hold my ground. I'm not a killer lick player, my technique still suffers from trying to get fast real quick in my beginner years (once you learn the wrong way, it's EXTREMELY hard to unlearn it) but I think I'm a decent improviser who can think outside the box sometimes. And that's all I need.

Oh and another thing that helped me a lot : I was never afraid of playing wrong stuff. Quite the contrary, I love atonal shit and just making noise.

 

Just take your guitar to a professional guitar repair person and your troubles will be over. If you can afford the 40 or 50 bucks you'll be happy that you did. Just because your guitar is cheap doesn't mean that it can't play well. Lots of guitarists use inexpensive guitars on the road like Brian May to name just one.

 

Pick-slanting and efficient down-picking (ellipse-like movement instead of up-down movement in one plane)

 

There was a youtube vid that explained fret buzz that was really good but couldn't find it. But this guy explains it although too talky/jokey. Electric guitars have fret buzz. Never owned a guitar, or played anothers that didn't buzz, or watched a pro instructional vid where the voice mic wasn't picking up that guitarists strings rattling all over the place.
There are certain buzzes that you can tell somethings off... it'll sound different than all the rest.. because of a high fret somewhere usually. As the previous person said, take to a tech for a setup, and then don't drive yourself crazy about buzzing.

 

Last edited: Dec 23, 2021

Stop comparing yourself to others and constant practice are the two things that will help the most. I'm > three decades in and I still run scales while I'm doing otherwise passive things like watching TV or browsing the webs.

There will always be people faster and cleaner than you. I found the best way to avoid negative comparisons was to pay attention to live recordings and notice how sloppy career guitarists are when they don't have the ability to continually edit footage and audio.

 

"make that 'breakthrough' to play with more precision"

and

"'see the all the notes' on the fretboard"

Are different things..
One is technique, the other is knowledge related.

On the first I'd suggest Economic picking,
it will polish your technique, and let you develop further..

On the second, learn Hamony, learn the Modes, know them by heart.
Later on you can compliment/extnd it with other approaches..

 

fghj

 

Last edited: Aug 12, 2022

I forget who originally said it but I'm saying it now...your fretting hand is what you know, your picking hand is who you are. Of course this is way simplistic, but has a foundation in truth. Think Neil Young who is a very simplistic player who's gotten extended milage out of basically the pentatonic blues scale. Because of how he picks the strings (and of course those signature tones derived from his rig) has created leads that are iconic (at least to me) out of a handful or so of notes.

 

Take lessons for advanced/intermediate players. If you are past the stage where lessons will help (I don't know where that is but ) or can't or will not spend the money, find people who are better than you and hang out, ask questions and play with them.

Write your own tunes and songs, they don't have to be great but they teach you a great deal more than copy-pasta unless all you really want to do is cover other people.

 

I agree, learn as many techniques as you can but, I will also says don´t try to be like other guitarist : just try to express yourself as a musician.
Learn the techniques that you think you´re going to need for extract the music that comes out of your brain.
Practice them slowly ... and practice ... and practice ... and practice.
Don´t try to acelerate the process of learning: hands and brain needs a time to learn, and with time your hands will become stronger.
IMHO it´s better to learn a technique slowly in "a good way", wich means that :
if your hands are "blocked" after doing a particular technique, probably you aren´t doing it well.
Try to do it again more slowly : speed will become with time and practice
Have patience with yourself, we all have good and bad days ;-)

Merry Chistmas

 

I sometimes wonder how much further I would have come if I'd incorporated ear training into my practice, I see people on youtube who are really good at it - Beato and Doug Helvering for example and it seems hugely important. I might go into that next.

 

Lol I love the "don't copy other guitarists, just be yourself" advises.

Uh.. finding your own voice is the hardest thing to achieve as a musician. And those rare musicians who have unique voices? They all started out copying other players.

 

I disagree that finding your own voice is the hardest thing to do, I think your own voice/sound is always there no matter what you do and the problem is that as beginners is we feel like we have to sound like our heroes. Everybody has their own voice, nobody has anybody elses. Eventually our own way of playing comes through, after giving up copying usually.

 

Ok fair enough, I should've said "having your own voice that's recognizable"

 

Technique: The same that helped me with piano technique. Learning to play without tension in unrelated muscle groups.

Harmony/Melody: Barry Harris method... BTW Barry passed away earlier this month RIP. His courses are posted on th sister site including his guitar workshop book I believe.